Stick Together

by Sophie Hénaff

  The excitement was already long gone. Not surprising, really. For a while now, any dealings with number 36 had been met with a barrage of insults. One guy had even spat a few inches from Évrard’s trainers. If the rest of the team had not rallied round her, she would definitely have slipped back into depression and joined the long roll-call of absentees. They always came back, but the disappointment clung to them like ticks on a tired dog.

  Merlot, after taking a deep breath to revive his vigour, brandished his magazine:

  “As it happens, I was reading an exceptional article in Marie Claire. Listen here: ‘Animals lend their sense of smell to science and the police.’ That’s the title,” he said, by way of clarification for Dax and Lewitz. ‘Pigs have a higher number of olfactory receptors than humans, dogs and mice, according to a recent study. This gift is put to good effect in Israel and the United States to root out drugs, weapons and landmines. French customs officers are trialling pigs from Brittany.’ And that’s not all! It goes on: ‘Trained to detect the odours of gunpowder and drugs, five rats have entered the ranks of the police in Rotterdam, Holland.’ Rats and pigs! Honestly! Can you imagine such a thing?”

  A dismayed Capestan looked on as everyone resumed their trivial activities as if nothing had happened. They had given up without so much as hearing her out. A few bits of bunting was all they had to show from this sustained period of empty-headed torpor. They were wallowing.

  “Imagine them in which investigation, Merlot? You all seem quite content slithering about in your leisure centre like earthworms. Police rats for who? I don’t see any police around here!”

  “Commissaire – ”

  “What? You’re a whisker away from turning up in your pyjamas! I’m warning you, either you listen to this brief, or I’m closing the commissariat. You can lounge about in the café downstairs like everyone else.”

  Her voice was shot through with anger – the pressures of the day were starting to take their toll. Now she had got them listening, she just needed to pique their interest, while maintaining an air of authority.

  “Buron gave us the call-up for sound reasons. We won’t be working for Crim.; we’ll be working in tandem with Crim. I don’t know if a policeman did it, Évrard, but what I do know is that the victim is a policeman. You’ll know him, no doubt, at least by reputation: Serge Rufus.”

  Now she had their attention. They focused on the whiteboard that had been pushed aside to make way for the Christmas tree. She picked up the marker pen, removed the lid and wrote “Serge Rufus” in big letters, before turning to her team to get the meeting properly underway. She had to keep the momentum going to avoid losing them.

  “Prior to retiring, Serge Rufus was one of the top commissaires in the Brigade Antigang. Now, we know that number 36 will do everything in their power to defend their colleague and pulverise anyone who stands in their way. They look out for their own. Our job is to fly the Swiss flag and remain entirely neutral. And maybe explore leads that the people at H.Q. – deliberately or not – might choose to neglect.”

  “Will we have access to the same info. as the others?” Évrard asked.

  “In theory, yes . . . a B.R.I. officer has been tasked with ensuring all developments are shared between each department.”

  “So if we solve the case before our high-and-mighty colleagues, that would go down as a win?” Évrard asked, ever the incorrigible gambler.

  “A thrashing, I’d say!” Merlot said, reassuring his partner.

  “A pasting!” Rosière added, more to make amends than to amuse the others.

  Everyone gathered round to hear the rest of the details. Merlot was already occupying the best part of the sofa with his usual expansiveness, while Évrard, Dax and Lewitz squeezed in alongside. Lebreton stayed standing, back to the wall, and Rosière had pulled up her padded armchair to close the circle, the dog keeping guard at her feet. Torrez was sitting on a stool in the corridor, leaning forward to keep track of the discussion.

  “We’re obviously not organised-crime experts, so we are starting with a handicap. If this does turn out to be a settling of scores from the Brigade Antigang’s past, we won’t have the case history to hand, nor will we have the same understanding of the terrain. But as we’ve seen before, we do have some – more unexpected – talents, right?” Capestan said, trying to breathe a bit of pride back into the group.

  “Yes, we do!” Dax blurted out, slapping his pal Lewitz on the thigh.

  The sound of the buzzer interrupted this sudden surge of ambition. Lebreton crossed the room to welcome their visitor. When he opened the door, he was surprised to discover a figure on the landing that towered even higher than he did. It was not every day that he had to look upwards to make eye contact with someone. The figure in question was standing bolt upright, and would have taken up the entire doorframe if he had decided to come inside. As it was, he simply introduced himself and held out an envelope:

  “Lieutenant Diament, Varappe Division. Here is a copy of the facts pertaining to the Rufus case. We’re still waiting on the autopsy and ballistics reports, but here you have the photographs of his residence, a summary of the door-to-door enquiries, and the records of a few suspects. I’ll keep you updated.”

  Without any further ceremony, the lieutenant performed an about-turn straight off the parade ground, then pressed the button to call the lift, ignoring Lebreton, who raised his eyebrows and settled for a “Thank you”, before calmly closing the door.

  Back in the sitting room, everyone had turned to face him. Dax and Lewitz were in hysterics:

  “Did you hear that guy?! ‘Varappe Division’ – it sounded like a fart! Hey,” the latter said, holding out his hand. “Brigadier Lewitz, Ping Pong Division.”

  His friend shook his hand.

  “Lieutenant Dax, Nintendo Division.”

  “I’m Évrard, Long Division,” the lieutenant said, numbers on the mind as usual.

  “Merlot, Gut-Rot Division!” the capitaine said, in a rare show of self-abasement.

  The four of them fell about laughing, red in the face, as Lebreton brought the envelope over to Capestan. She opened it and glanced through the documents inside, passing them around the team. As she did so, a yellow Post-it on one of the final sheets caught her attention.

  Someone had scribbled on it: Why don’t you go and comfort the son and leave the case to the grown-ups. A sudden surge of anger overcame Capestan and her cheeks burned. Her heart rate went into overdrive and she had to breathe through her nose to suppress the blazing fury. She scrumpled up the note and continued studying the file with her mind split in two: one part analysing the information, the other smarting at the humiliation and already plotting her revenge.

  “The telephone records start in June and finish in August. Is that it?” Lebreton said with surprise.

  The last three months were indeed missing. Same for the bank statements. Every document had been gutted of all significant content.

  “No. I get the impression that the go-betweens aren’t going to excel at fair play,” the commissaire said, trying to tone down the aggression in her voice. “No matter. We don’t need them to think, and we can fill in any gaps on our own. Even so, there’s plenty of info. for us to make a start. So, we’ve got Serge Rufus shot dead: bullet between the eyes; middle of the street; hands cuffed behind his back. Even if the autopsy report isn’t ready yet, extensive bruising on his face suggests that he’d been beaten, maybe even tortured. For thrills? For revenge? To get him to talk?”

  She did not know the answer, but Capestan was sure of one thing: whatever methods were used, it was extremely unlikely that anyone managed to extract a single word from that man.

  “Rue Gassendi might not be the busiest street, but there are still far too many people around – day and night – for him to have been beaten up outdoors. Unless it happened in the Montparnasse Cemetery just over the road? Then they took him to the pavement outside his flat, specifically to shoot him. The blood stains are unambigu
ous – they pulled the trigger there, in front of the sign. Burn marks around the bullet’s entry point would appear to indicate the use of a silencer. Even without the ballistics report, we can hedge our bets on a 9mm. The cuffs aren’t standard-issue for the French police, they’re Ukrainian,” the commissaire said, holding up a different sheet. “Both the method and the apparatus have led Crim. to suspect the members of a gang based in Kiev. Three years ago, Serge stuck two of their guys behind bars and a third in intensive care. The last one never got out. This lot have a reputation for harbouring bitter grudges. The B.R.I., however, is not discounting other leads or gangs. Serge and his men have upset a lot of people, all of them nasty pieces of work. Of course, this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt bearing in mind where it’s come from.”

  Crim. and the B.R.I. were always going to max out the organised-crime route. It would take months – even for two or three groups – to trace everything back, study timelines and list potential mercenaries. Capestan’s squad was never going to compete with them on that front. They would have to focus their efforts elsewhere.

  First up, there was the street sign. Not a single mention anywhere in Diament’s paperwork. Hardly revealing in itself – the assumption had to be that number 36 would look into it further down the line. Weapons, blood, vendettas . . . high drama first, anything out of the ordinary second. The sign was there to mark the ending, to provoke fear, to make the victim sweat. There were plenty of sadists in the organised-crime world, but this ironic, stylised touch hinted at a certain refinement, a wry premeditation, that were not the hallmarks of your average mafioso. This plan had needed a thinking cap, albeit a sick one.

  “At the crime scene,” Capestan said, returning to the board and pointing her pen at one of the photographs lying on the coffee table, “someone had removed the street sign and switched it with another bearing the name of the victim, his dates and his profession: ‘Bastard Commissaire’.”

  “When was the sign put up?” Évrard asked in her soft voice.

  “No idea. The cemetery is right there – maybe there’ll be C.C.T.V.”

  “Let’s ask the Varappe guys. They’ll be able to yank the cameras down with their Spiderman web-shooters!” Lewitz said, slapping Dax on the thigh.

  “We’ll definitely ask if they have any footage. Number 36 might pass it on to us once they’re done with it.”

  “The killer knew the stiff’s date of birth . . . that’s something, isn’t it?” Rosière said.

  “Yes, you’re right, that is odd. Dax,” Capestan said, turning to the lieutenant, who was still looking very chuffed about his Spiderman comment, “can you check online and see how readily available this information is on the Internet, or whether you have to hack into official sites to get it?”

  “Where can you get a sign like that made?” Lebreton asked, peeling himself away from the wall. “A D.I.Y. shop? A printer’s? A website?”

  Rosière was flicking back and forth through the documents.

  “The victim’s wife died several years ago,” she said after a while, “but he had a son: Paul Rufus. I can’t find a statement from him. Has anyone told him yet? They don’t seem to have questioned him.”

  Capestan lowered her head and gazed at the tips of her boots. It was time to tell them the real reason they had been assigned this case, not to mention come clean about the potential conflict of interest that might cloud her judgement at any moment. She sighed. There was nothing she hated more than revealing even the smallest detail about her personal life. She was all about discretion and a keenly guarded sense of privacy – years in the police spent rummaging through other people’s lives had made sure of that. Here, honesty had to prevail over her secretive nature. The commissaire looked up and said blankly:

  “It was me – I told the son. Paul Rufus is my ex-husband. Which makes the victim my former father-in-law.”

  For a few moments the room was dominated by a collective flutter of poorly disguised glances.

  “Well, that’s great!” Évrard said, immediately regretting her outburst. “No, sorry, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that in terms of information, backstory and perspective, we’ll have a massive advantage over the competition . . .”

  “In a way,” Capestan said.

  “What was he like, then, this super-cop? Clean? Bent?”

  The commissaire felt her gaze drift out the window. She would not have gone so far as saying “corrupt”, no, but there was definitely some shady conduct. Although, back then, her attention had been on other things. On other people.

  6

  École Nationale Supérieure de la Police de

  Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d’Or, Rhône, February, 1992

  “Capestan, Commissaire Buron has saved your arse after yet another screw-up and I’ve got no idea why. Maybe he’s taken a shine to it. Not me, though. An order’s an order, and I expect it to be obeyed.”

  “No disrespect, commissaire, but your orders – as with your insinuations – sometimes seem inappropriate.”

  It was said without any insolence, nor the slightest timidity. At barely nineteen, Capestan was by far the youngest in her year, and despite excelling at pretty much everything, she had some way to go when it came to diplomacy. She knew she should be better at holding her tongue, and reproached herself frequently, albeit never for long. Those were the kinds of skills she would have plenty of time to work on when she was fully fledged. Anyway, Serge Rufus, the most objectionable of her instructors, left little room for manoeuvre. Either you let him squash you or you stood up for yourself: there was no room for half measures.

  The two of them were crossing the training ground, making for the sliding security gates at the entrance. Seeing the vast earth embankment stretching out before them, Capestan searched for a way out of this wearisome conversation.

  “I don’t care much for your tone, Capestan. I’m not your primary school maths teacher – I don’t take kindly to being heckled by piss-artists at the back of the class.”

  Rufus’s last sentence fell on deaf ears. Capestan was no longer aware he even existed. As the light suddenly transformed into a Texan sunset, Anne was spellbound by the arrival of a demi-god in a thick navy turtleneck and Carhartt jacket. As he walked straight towards her, their smiles broadened together, already free of any doubt. When he was just a metre away, he stopped. Capestan stopped. Serge Rufus stopped.

  “Hi, papa,” the demi-god said.

  “Paul, what the hell are you doing here?” the commissaire spat.

  He was the son of a shit like Rufus. The realisation dampened the mood like a cold shower, but not for long, as every last drop evaporated in the warmth of Paul’s eyes. Paul. He handed his father a folded piece of paper.

  “From your informer. He didn’t want to give his name. It seemed urgent, a meeting or something. Given the welcome, though,” he said, turning to Capestan, “maybe I’ll give it to your colleague instead. She’s much more smiley . . .”

  Capestan’s mind was already miles away. Her endorphins were running wild and she was too stunned to speak, think, react in any way, let alone take the piece of paper from him. In that split second she had waited nineteen long years to experience, Anne fell in love with an angel-eyed poser, a gleaming, superhuman show-off with the puffed-up ego of a peacock.

  Serge checked Paul’s movement. She saw a flash of fear in the son’s eyes, the automatic recoil of his wrist and a tensing of his jaw. Capestan’s brain kicked back into action. Party over. Serge Rufus was a brute, and no-one would be more aware of that fact than his son.

  7

  Paris, 29 November, 2012

  “He ordered it off this site,” Dax said, pointing at the screen.

  The flashing website that he had just hacked promoted, among other things, custom-made pint glasses for the newly retired and mugs with badly framed, heart-shaped photographs. The street sign page offered a wide variety of materials and inscriptions: New Baby Boulevard, Strictly No Moaners, Just Married Street, etc.
But there was another section where you could type in your own message. To announce a murder, for example, and terrify your victim in the process.

  “Can you see if he left a delivery address?” Capestan said, knowing already that the killer would never have been so stupid.

  “Oh yeah, of course!” Dax said, who would have done the same in his shoes.

  The young boxer thumped the keyboard and scrunched up his nose, willing the pages to load faster. No-one was ever quite sure what Dax would strike upon, least of all Dax. This I.T. whizz had left a lot of brain in the boxing ring. His technical skills were intact, but it was still safe to stay by his side to focus his efforts. That said, Capestan did not want to be patronising, so just before returning to her desk she threw out one last request.

  “If you know how to find a credit card number or some bank records, maybe another transaction or two, then go right ahead. Pile up the data and we’ll whittle it down later. Happy hunting!”

  The lieutenant shuddered with delight and grinned at his desktop. It was no “Call of Duty”, but it wasn’t far off.

  Get one over on the big dogs at number 36, catch the killer, then deliver the news gently to Paul. Capestan was desperate to do her duty. A mixture of determination and sorrow was threatening to overwhelm her, so she let the adrenaline guide her research as she kept tabs on the team. After all, the last thing they needed on top of their other setbacks was a gloomy boss.

  *

  The front door clicked open and Rosière’s dog, short of leg but full of gusto, flew in and made straight for Merlot’s crotch. The capitaine let out a hiccup of surprise as the hound’s mistress boomed across the room:

  “Pilou, for Christ’s sake, don’t be so vulgar! Hey! What is that?”

  A rat with brown fur, no doubt piqued by the dog’s intervention, poked his head out from the capitaine’s jacket pocket, whiskers twitching from side to side in search of an explanation. Merlot stroked him reassuringly with the back of his hand.